How has your conceptual understanding of literacy changed since beginning this class?
Although through TE 301 we learned various techniques, the vocabulary, and the basics of literacy, I didn’t realize how much of an impact literacy had on all subject areas and aspects of life! As we have talked about in class and from many of the readings, literacy in the classroom is affected by the surrounding environment like the neighbors, students, families, professionals, experts, and economy of a given area. The prior knowledge the students bring into a classroom can play a key role in the literacy used in the classroom. I knew literacy had everything to do with the reading and writing within a classroom but I didn’t ever really think about the strategies, activities, and lessons a teacher prepares for students. Actively participating in the book clubs, new literacies, technology with literacy and graphic organizers has really opened my eyes to the limitless ways to boost the positive interaction between students and literacy.
How does your research on a new literacy and development of your own digital literacy (using your new technology) inform your thinking?
The week after doing the new literacies project I was asked to be a guest reader in a classroom for March is reading month. We took lots of pictures and the teacher asked me to be sure to get them to her. Not wanting to send a million e-mails to her with the pics attached, I put together an online scrap-blog with the pictures, my comments, and a thank you page for the students and teacher. The teacher e-mailed me and was so impressed with the thought, final product, and the excitement from the students to read everything I had written to them. This really showed me the impact a simple creation of a five page scrap-blog in a classroom can have on students! Seeing classmates projects on other types of literacy and various technologies to use has given me lots of ideas of ways to create lesson plans in the future for my students.
What new knowledge, skills, strategies and dispositions are you now aware of, and how do these compare/contrast with more traditional literacies?
Like I said, I always just associated literacy with reading and writing. Now knowing the vast areas literacy can be incorporated into the classroom I am excited to know there are alternatives to handing out worksheets, or close reading a textbook all day every day. I think my new ideas of literacy blend well with traditional literacies as they both focus on students reading, writing, speaking, and listening but these new literacies open up ways to focus on each area.
What does it mean to provide “effective literacy instruction” to diverse learners?
Like I said, I always just associated literacy with reading and writing. Now knowing the vast areas literacy can be incorporated into the classroom I am excited to know there are alternatives to handing out worksheets, or close reading a textbook all day every day. I think my new ideas of literacy blend well with traditional literacies as they both focus on students reading, writing, speaking, and listening but these new literacies open up ways to focus on each area.
What does it mean to provide “effective literacy instruction” to diverse learners?
Every student learns differently whether it be the pace, the content, the influence they receive from the lesson, or the way in which they learn best. For visual learners, it is important to have the literacy instruction available visually, like a presentation or having the directions written out for them to see. Kinesthetic learners will take away the most from a lesson if they can feel, touch, or be a physical part of the lesson; like acting out a play for instance. Auditory learners will benefit the most from hearing the lesson and or directions. The list could go on and on, but the main goal is to provide each student with the tools that will make them the most successful learner.
Mini Lesson Plan
• Target area and rationale: Visual Decoding – pictures speak a million words, each student might get a different idea from simply hearing a story so keeping them all on the same page is important in understanding literary elements of the story.
• Objective(s): Students will illustrate a story simply from listening to it being read, then will re-read the story being able to see the pictures and will compare their drawings to the actual illustrations
• Materials and Supplies Needed: paper, crayons, the book “Hello Red Fox” by Eric Carle.
• Outline of Key Events:
1. Teacher will lead a discussion of what illustrations are with the class.
2. Students will sit at their desks with their crayons and paper ready while the teacher reads the book. The students will not be shown the illustrations and the cover of the book will be hidden as well.
3. Students will listen closely to the descriptions given from the teacher reading the text and will draw their picture strictly based on what the text says.
4. As a whole class, the students will listen to the teacher re-read the book and will be shown the illustrations this time.
5. Students will volunteer to compare and contrast their drawings to the book illustrations for the whole class to see.
• Closing Summary: A final teacher lead discussion will stress the importance of illustrations to a story as they keep the reader on track with exactly what the author was wanting to say and show (visual literacy.)
• Ongoing Assessment: Students could read a story of their choosing and create their own interpretations of the illustrations and discuss why they did or did not make changes to the original illustrations.
• Materials and Supplies Needed: paper, crayons, the book “Hello Red Fox” by Eric Carle.
• Outline of Key Events:
1. Teacher will lead a discussion of what illustrations are with the class.
2. Students will sit at their desks with their crayons and paper ready while the teacher reads the book. The students will not be shown the illustrations and the cover of the book will be hidden as well.
3. Students will listen closely to the descriptions given from the teacher reading the text and will draw their picture strictly based on what the text says.
4. As a whole class, the students will listen to the teacher re-read the book and will be shown the illustrations this time.
5. Students will volunteer to compare and contrast their drawings to the book illustrations for the whole class to see.
• Closing Summary: A final teacher lead discussion will stress the importance of illustrations to a story as they keep the reader on track with exactly what the author was wanting to say and show (visual literacy.)
• Ongoing Assessment: Students could read a story of their choosing and create their own interpretations of the illustrations and discuss why they did or did not make changes to the original illustrations.
I really like how you mentioned that the prior knowledge children bring to the classroom is such an important role in literacy. This is something I had thought about, but never connected as being such an important role. You're 100% right though..they may be fluent readers or writers, but they could also have fluency in decoding based on using picture cards in previous classes, proficient in technology. The list could continue for example when decoding pictures used on assignments every child has had different experiences so the picture speaks differently to each individual making it important for teachers to not only show pictures, but explain their expectations.
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